Étienne Bignou

Étienne Bignou (born 1891, d. 1950) was a French art dealer specializing in 19th and 20th century art.[1]

Etienne Bignou
Born3 June 1891
Paris
Died12 December 1950
Paris
OccupationArt Dealer

Biography

Bignou first worked with his father-in-law, Bonjean, on rue Laffitte, a specialist in ancient art. Bignou took over the gallery in 1909, partnering with The Lefèvre Gallery in London and Alex Reid in Glasgow, which in 1926 joined to create Alex Reid & Lefèvre in London, of which Bignou became a director.[2]

In 1929, in association with Gaston and Josse Bernheim-Jeune, Bignou bought the Georges Petit gallery on Rue de Sèze[3] and appointed Georges Keller as director.[4] Bignou organized a Matisse exhibition there in June–July 1931, Picasso in June–July 1932.

After the closure of the Georges Petit gallery in 1933, Bignou set up the Bignou Gallery in Paris with a branch in New York run by Keller on 57th Street, which opened in 1935.[5][6][7][8] He organized a Renoir exhibition there.[9] After Bignou's death in 1950, Keller continued to run the gallery, then closed it in 1953 and joined Carstairs Gallery.[10] Bignou acted as agent for the American art collector and philanthropist Chester Dale, as well as supplying him with numerous artworks.[11]

According to Lynn H. Nicolas in The Rape of Europa, during World War II, Bignou entered into a profit sharing agreement with Martin Fabiani concerning the shipment of "429 paintings, drawing and watercolors by Renoir, 68 Cézannes, 57 Rouaults, 13 Gauguin, and so forth, to a grand total of 635" artworks.[12] "They left Lisbon on September 25, 1940, on the SS Excalibur" but were seized by the British Navy "on account of their enemy origin, and of doubts about the sympathies of Fabiani", and stored in Canada.[12]

Bignou had a collection of manuscripts and autographs which was dispersed by Pierre Bérès, from 1975. It included the first manuscript of Céline's Voyage au Bout de la Nuit that the writer had sold to the merchant for ten thousand francs and a painting by Renoir, on May 29, 1943.[13][14]

Bignou is buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (92nd division).

Nazi-looted art controversies

In 1945-6, Bignou was investigated by the OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit for his involvement in dealing in Nazi-looted art and listed as a Red Flag Name.[15][16][17]

In recent years, several artworks that passed through Bignou were discovered to have been looted by Nazis or sold in forced sales or under duress by Jewish collectors during the Holocaust.[18]

In 2013, Group of Trees, 1890, a watercolour by Paul Cézanne, "surfaced" at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa with a provenance that experts said required further verification as the British navy had seized it in a cargo of artworks sent by art dealer Fabiani to Bignou.[19][20]

In 2019, the Kunstmuseum in Bern came under scrutiny for Georges F. Keller's donations of artworks by artists like Henri Matisse and Salvador Dalí because of his association with Bignou, who was described as "sulferous" due to his art dealing with Germans during the Nazi occupation of France.[21][22][23] The Swiss museum, which had also received artworks from the Gurlitt stash, announced that it would investigate the provenance of artworks donated by George F. Keller since his business partner Bignou collaborated with the Nazis.[24][25][26][27]

See also

Notes et references
  1. "Archives Directory for the History of Collecting". research.frick.org. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  2. "Bignou, Etienne - Biography". www.nga.gov. National Gallery of Art. Archived from the original on 2021-04-23. Retrieved 2021-04-23. Bignou was a Parisian art dealer, the stepson of Bonjean, a dealer whose gallery and stock on the Rue la Boétie Bignou inherited at the start of his career. When Bignou took over the gallery in 1909, he used his knowledge of the English language and his experience in the London fur-trade to sell his French paintings in London and Glasgow. He fostered his associations with The Lefèvre Gallery in London and Alex Reid in Glasgow, two firms which ultimately (in 1926) formed the partnership of Mssrs. Alex Reid & Lefèvre in London, of which Bignou became a director.
  3. "Bignou, Etienne - Biography". www.nga.gov. Archived from the original on 2021-04-23. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  4. "The art of shedding light on gifts with possible Nazi ties". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-05.
  5. AFP, French Press Agency- (2019-01-07). "The art of shedding light on gifts with possible Nazi ties". Daily Sabah. Archived from the original on 2019-02-03. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  6. Jewell, Edward Alden (1935-03-04). "ART IN REVIEW; Etienne Bignou, Paris Dealer, Widely Known Here, Opens a New York Gallery Today". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  7. "British Relief Show". The New York Times. 1941-01-21. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  8. "Aspects of His Art In Bignou Show". The New York Times. 1935-12-08. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  9. Jewell, Edward Alden (1938-11-23). "RENOIR AND DUFY SHOWN AT BIGNOU; Six Canvases of the Former Range From 1895 to 'Reverie,' Painted in His Last Year ARTISTS UNITED BY COLOR All but One of Eight Works by the Younger Painter Were Done Within 1938 Gris, a Decade Later Art Brevities". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  10. "Bignou Gallery, Paris and New York". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-05.
  11. "Bignou, Etienne - Biography". www.nga.gov. National Gallery of Art. Archived from the original on 2021-04-23. Retrieved 2021-04-23. t. Etienne Bignou frequently supplied Chester Dale [1883-1962] with paintings, as well as acting as an agent on his behalf.
  12. H., Nicholas, Lynn (2009). The rape of Europa : the fate of Europe's treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-73972-8. OCLC 649080564. Fabiani believed that works of this nature would be considerably more salable in the United States or perhaps Britain than to the new rulers of France,; to this end he had entered into a profit-sharing agreement with Etienne Bignou, New York, and Reid and Lefèvre, London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. "Cet homme était le plus grand libraire du monde..." LExpress.fr (in French). 2008-08-01. Retrieved 2021-04-23. Mais son plus beau coup reste ce manuscrit du Voyage au bout de la nuit, dont on avait perdu la trace depuis sa vente par Céline au galeriste Etienne Bignou, en 1943 et qu'il propose soudain à la vente en 2001. A ceux qui lui demandent comment cette pièce mythique lui est parvenue, il se contente d'un très laconique: «Par la porte...» Et si l'on insiste un peu, il parle d'un mystérieux «collectionneur anglais anonyme». Une fable à laquelle le petit monde des lettres ne croit pas une seconde. Certains se souviennent en effet que Pierre Berès avait racheté, en 1975, nombre de livres aux héritiers de Bignou. Le manuscrit du Voyage devait être du lot. Comme à son habitude, il a dû le laisser vieillir comme un bon vin dans sa cave. Bien lui en a pris: il devient le manuscrit le plus cher du monde. Sur l'estrade de Drouot, l'expert Berès réprime un petit sourire.
  14. "Le mystérieux itinéraire du Voyage". LExpress.fr (in French). 2001-05-10. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  15. "Wartime Art Trade: Dealers". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-05.
  16. "Military Agency Records RG 226". National Archives. 2016-08-15. Retrieved 2021-04-05. Safehaven report on Rudolph Buescheweyh, suspected German cloak in Switzerland for Buehrle. (Note 3) 2 pp. May 1945; see also 9954 Safehaven report about Charles Montag, a Swiss, who knew about Buerhle, and who is said to have been involved with Bignou and Adolf Wuester (Note 4) of the German embassy trying to sell in Switzerland the Paris art firm of Bernheim Jeune. (Note 5) 1 p. May 1945
  17. "Nicht nur "Fall Gurlitt" - Neuer Verdacht auf Raubkunst im Kunstmuseum Bern". Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF) (in German). 2018-09-12. Archived from the original on 2018-09-12. Retrieved 2021-04-23. Während der Besatzungszeit im Zweiten Weltkrieg war Keller in Paris aktiv und arbeitete dort mit dem Kunsthändler Étienne Bignou zusammen. Dieser ist bekannt für seine Kollaboration mit den Nationalsozialisten und dem Handel mit Raubkunst. Étienne Bignou musste sich nach dem Krieg vor einem französischen Gericht dafür verantworten. «Keller und Bignou waren über Jahrzehnte hinweg Geschäftspartner und beteiligten sich gemeinsam an der Arisierung einer jüdischen Galerie in Paris», erklärt Provenienzforscherin Nikola Doll.
  18. "It Turns Out That the Gurlitt Trove May Not Be the Kunstmuseum Bern's Only Gift That Is Tainted by Nazi Loot". Artnet News. 2019-01-07. Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  19. "'Orphaned' Cézanne watercolour surfaces in Ottawa". lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-05. Working with Vollard's brother, Lucien, a drug-addicted former diplomat, Fabiani, who was Vollard's executor, shipped the works through Spain and Portugal to the US to be sold at Gallery E. Bignou, a conduit for Vollard's stock in New York. In Bermuda, the British Navy intercepted the ship and seized the Vollard cargo. The contents were sent to the more suitable climate of a vault in Ottawa. (During the war, Fabiani provided pictures seized from Jews to dealers supplying Nazi officials. He also organised exhibitions for Allied soldiers after the liberation of Paris. He was later imprisoned and fined around $1m.) The pictures remained in Canada until 1949, when Fabiani, freed from prison, petitioned a British court for their return. A judge in Paris awarded him three-quarters of the works; the rest were given to Vollard's two sisters.
  20. Karrels, Nancy Caron (November 2015). "Reconstructing a Wartime Journey: The Vollard-Fabiani Collection, 1940–1949". International Journal of Cultural Property. 22 (4): 505–526. doi:10.1017/S0940739115000296. ISSN 0940-7391. S2CID 165052890.
  21. AFP, French Press Agency- (2019-01-07). "The art of shedding light on gifts with possible Nazi ties". Daily Sabah. Archived from the original on 2019-02-03. Retrieved 2021-04-23. When Georges F. Keller began donating paintings by masters like Henri Matisse and Salvador Dali to the Kunstmuseum in Bern his reputation was not in doubt. The Swiss-Brazilian national had been a respected art dealer who gifted 116 works to the museum from the 1950s until his death in 1981. But last year, the Kunstmuseum's provenance researcher came across an archival document linking Keller to Etienne Bignou, a Frenchman now considered a "red-flag" dealer because he traded art with Germans in Nazi-occupied Paris. For the Bern museum, the potential fallout of gifts with possible Nazi ties was not new.
  22. magazine, Le Point (2019-01-06). "Oeuvres d'art volées par les Nazis: un véritable défi pour un musée suisse". Le Point (in French). Retrieved 2021-04-23.
  23. Le Point (2019-01-06). "Oeuvres d'art volées par les Nazis: un véritable défi pour un musée suisse". Le Point (in French). Archived from the original on 2019-01-06. Retrieved 2021-04-23. Mais il y a quelques mois, le responsable du Kunstmuseum chargé de vérifier la provenance des oeuvres d'art est tombé sur un document liant Keller à Etienne Bignou, un Français considéré aujourd'hui comme un marchand d'art "sulfureux" qui avait fait du commerce avec les Allemands pendant l'Occupation à Paris.
  24. "It Turns Out That the Gurlitt Trove May Not Be the Kunstmuseum Bern's Only Gift That Is Tainted by Nazi Loot". lootedart.com. Retrieved 2021-04-05. Cracks in the reputation of the late art dealer Georges F. Keller, who is one of the Kunstmuseum Bern's greatest donors, have started to show. The Swiss-Brazilian philanthropist's business links with a Paris dealer favored by the Nazi Germans has cast a shadow over some of the 116 works that he gave to the Swiss museum, which is no stranger to gifts with problematic provenance. Now, the institution has resolved to investigate the gifts further. The Bern museum received works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Salvador Dalí, and Chaim Soutine, as well as money—quite a lot of money—from Keller, who died in 1981. What it did not get was much paperwork to support the works' provenance. "I was always curious," the museum's director Nina Zimmer told Agence France-Presse. "We have almost zero knowledge of where these works came from before he gave them to us." The troubling link ties Keller with Étienne Bignou, a French art dealer and known "collaborator" during the Nazi Occupation of Paris, according to Agence-France Presse.
  25. magazine, Le Point (2019-01-06). "Oeuvres d'art volées par les Nazis: un véritable défi pour un musée suisse". Le Point (in French). Retrieved 2021-04-05.
  26. AFP, Par. "La Suisse et son rôle ambigu dans la restitution d'oeuvres pillées aux juifs". fr.timesofisrael.com (in French). Retrieved 2021-04-05.
  27. "Oeuvres d'art volées par les Nazis: un véritable défi pour un musée suisse". FranceSoir (in French). 2019-01-06. Retrieved 2021-04-05.

Bibliography
  • Christian Zervos, "Entretien avec Étienne Bignou", Cahiers d'art, 1927, n° 7-8, p. 1-2.
  • Ph. Mariot, "Plaques de verre photographiques provenant des archives d'Etienne Bignou", 48/14. Revue du Musée d'Orsay, 2007, n° 25, p. 79.
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